Documation: Taking the Ken Burns Effect to the 21st Century

In Waltz with Bashir, director Ari Folman makes the documentary cool again -- and even cooler to look at.

The arresting image above, from the Israeli documentary Waltz with Bashir, is powerful mostly because of what it could have been -- a still of Israeli men recounting the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese war. That's the problem with historical documentaries -- no matter how revealing the interviews, you're too often looking at talking heads. So director Ari Folman first filmed his doc about the Sabra and Shatila massacre -- the slaughter of Palestinians by Lebanese Phalangist Christians that the Israeli army did nothing to stop -- in a traditional manner. He then had a team of animators bring the events to life, to devastating effect. It's not a brand-new approach, but Waltz with Bashir, which received wild praise at the Toronto Film Festival, is by far the most sophisticated example. More documentaries should be done this way: The Ken Burns effect may suggest motion, but Ari Folman's technique moves you.